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The judges decisions on the Breathe urban village design competition were announced last night and we are thrilled and honoured that the Viva/Jasmax entry has been selected as one of the four finalists to go through to the next stage.
The judges particularly commented on our strong community involvement and our very high sustainability standard. Our Living Village is based around three courtyards with a community centre near the heart and a mix of houses, apartments and a small amount of retail. It is net zero energy, very efficient in water use and the physical design encourages a strong sense of community, with many informal gathering places and layers between private and common areas. The landscape and architectural design acknowledges the history of the land, its natural environment and the cultures that have passed this way.

The Viva/Jasmax team with Christchurch Mayor, Bob Parker

Here are our entry’s three design boards, illustrating our design with respect to People, Place and Planet.

You can see the main three design panels for all 68 entries on the Breath website http://www.futurechristchurch.co.nz/breathe and the top 22 (not 58 at stated in The Press) on the large panels in Worcester St between the council chambers and the Art Gallery.

There are wonderful things in all the entries so I think we are all looking forward to exploring them in more detail and seeing what we can learn!

We are looking forward to being given within the next few weeks more detailed briefing from the judges about what they liked about our design and what they would like to see in the next stage, and while the Jasmax design team is in Christchurch for that, we plan to have a Viva community meeting with the architects and the core Viva team involved in the design to share a lot more of the design thinking and detail, and seek your reactions. So more details about that as soon as we have the date.

The next phase of the process is to add a lot more flesh to the bones of the design, and in particular to get much more specific about costings and how we can make the development become a reality.